Nobody Knows the Trouble I See
1943
Black-and-white lithograph
13” x 10” plate
African American families of GIs made outstanding sacrifices during World War II, as is seen in detailed studies and final prints. Here, a fire has engulfed a two-story wooden-frame Eastern Shore house, and the mother has perished in the flames—underscoring the stark domestic reality faced by mothers on the home front. Amidst billowing smoke, the matriarch is shown barefoot and seated on a throne in the sky above the flames as angels usher her into heaven. She gazes down serenely as if to suggest that she wouldn’t want her death to trouble her children. Farmyard animals scatter chaotically away from the fire across the landscape. The soldier father stands in the foreground, with his children clinging to him in their grief. He is dressed in his uniform and looks on in shocked disbelief as he shields two of his children from the heat of the flames.